[long] Re: Legal traps in open source
Sam Couter
sam at couter.dropbear.id.au
Thu Oct 31 13:29:44 EST 2002
Alex Satrapa <grail at goldweb.com.au> wrote:
> Suing someone because coffee is made with boiling water seems to me to
> be like suing a car manufacturer because their engine gets hot.
http://lawandhelp.com/q298-2.htm
The only important bit that I've read elsewhere is the reason *why*
McDonalds keeps their coffee hotter: It lasts longer.
The jury saw McDonalds serving coffee hotter because it saves them money
even if it's more dangerous. Lives/pain versus profit, the greedy
coporation lost this one.
Another fact (also read elsewhere) is that the money awarded to the
woman was reduced by some amount for "contributory negligence", meaning
she's stupid enough to spill hot coffee on herself, she should take some
of the blame.
That bit is mentioned here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A429950
So the story is not as simple as some people like to make out.
--
Sam "Eddie" Couter | mailto:sam at couter.dropbear.id.au
Debian Developer | mailto:eddie at debian.org
| jabber:sam at jabber.topic.com.au
OpenPGP fingerprint: A46B 9BB5 3148 7BEA 1F05 5BD5 8530 03AE DE89 C75C
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.samba.org/archive/linux/attachments/20021031/2b1216bf/attachment.bin
More information about the linux
mailing list